ANTMINER U3 Discussion and Support Thread

[MyRig]

For U3 purchased from other than Bitmaintech.com, please PM us with your original proof of purchase (showing the payment date, shipping tracking from the seller, and a payment method) and description of what is wrong with it.

Original Buyer has 90-days of warranty from the date of purchase.

Resold units don't reset the warranty date based on your purchase date if you purchased it from other than Bitmaintech.com

To be considered for repair/exchange, PLEASE provide BitmainWarranty with your full purchase info and after-sale issue correspondence with the seller who decline to assist with you. (If there was no response from the sellers, please provide us the proof you attempted to initiate the contact but no avail.)

If you were given authorization to return to Denver, Colorado address, please include the PM authorizing you to return with the original purchase record with the miner.  

thank you!

[irobb]

For U3 purchased from other than Bitmaintech.com, please PM us with your original proof of purchase (showing the payment date, shipping tracking from the seller, and a payment method) and description of what is wrong with it.

Original Buyer has 90-days of warranty from the date of purchase.

Resold units don't reset the warranty date based on your purchase date if you purchased it from other than Bitmaintech.com

To be considered for repair/exchange, PLEASE provide BitmainWarranty with your full purchase info and after-sale issue correspondence with the seller who decline to assist with you. (If there was no response from the sellers, please provide us the proof you attempted to initiate the contact but no avail.)

If you were given authorization to return to Denver, Colorado address, please include the PM authorizing you to return with the original purchase record with the miner.  

thank you!

Considering that my power brick melted which forced me to modify the unit to accept power from 12V off my PSU, am I still covered for this warranty?
https://i.imgur.com/keNqqq6l.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/DXsBvKOl.jpg
Also having to re-solder a connection?

[ppumkin]

Hey maybe that one capicotr was the why I was only getting 45GHS on of the units. Maybe it knocked out one of the ASICS.

Any way. I have been hashing almost 24 hours and no ZOMBIE. What I did was try and run cgminer 4.9.0 without any au3 settings.

It must be the overclocking that crashes the firmware and you MUST hard reset the whole thing. I suppose if you want to get 70ghs out of these puppies then you need to be ready to fix them everyday or create something to cut USB power and +12v with some kind of MCU... I could do it but not worth it really.

Both my U3 running stable neck in neck at 56.50gh/s WU:788.3

So they DID test it for long times on stock settings. The over clocking is the problem for ZOMBIES so it looks.... I hope after I post this I dont get ZOMBIE. heheh

Nice job on the thermal paste jobbie. Maybe they thought more was better.

[ppumkin]

For U3 purchased from other than Bitmaintech.com, please PM us with your original proof of purchase (showing the payment date, shipping tracking from the seller, and a payment method) and description of what is wrong with it.

Original Buyer has 90-days of warranty from the date of purchase.

Resold units don't reset the warranty date based on your purchase date if you purchased it from other than Bitmaintech.com

To be considered for repair/exchange, PLEASE provide BitmainWarranty with your full purchase info and after-sale issue correspondence with the seller who decline to assist with you. (If there was no response from the sellers, please provide us the proof you attempted to initiate the contact but no avail.)

If you were given authorization to return to Denver, Colorado address, please include the PM authorizing you to return with the original purchase record with the miner.  

thank you!

Considering that my power brick melted which forced me to modify the unit to accept power from 12V off my PSU, am I still covered for this warranty?
https://i.imgur.com/keNqqq6l.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/DXsBvKOl.jpg
Also having to re-solder a connection?

The power brick works just fine with stock settings. They did not warn about over volting that might caused this. Obviously higher amps. Any way it would not have burned.

The coil would have fused before any fire would start and that would trip your mains safety (taking into account you don't live in a house wired earlier than 1975ish) besides the plastic used is fire ratardand (FCC compliant). Go ahead and try set it on fire do it outside cause there are more fumes than flames!

[irobb]

i was using the cgminer off the instructions when the adapter did that... 

[Visvas]

It must be the overclocking that crashes the firmware and you MUST hard reset the whole thing. I suppose if you want to get 70ghs out of these puppies then you need to be ready to fix them everyday or create something to cut USB power and +12v with some kind of MCU... I could do it but not worth it really.

No, its not overclocking. My two has zombied from day one, before i even tried anything other than default. And one of them has only given me 40-45 for the most part since i got it.
Due to the shipping cost of them however, it's not worth it to return it from here, i'll just make sure to warn people of the low quality of these.. Too bad, other than that, i kind of like these units.

[ppumkin]

It must be the overclocking that crashes the firmware and you MUST hard reset the whole thing. I suppose if you want to get 70ghs out of these puppies then you need to be ready to fix them everyday or create something to cut USB power and +12v with some kind of MCU... I could do it but not worth it really.

No, its not overclocking. My two has zombied from day one, before i even tried anything other than default. And one of them has only given me 40-45 for the most part since i got it.
Due to the shipping cost of them however, it's not worth it to return it from here, i'll just make sure to warn people of the low quality of these.. Too bad, other than that, i kind of like these units.

Yea, mine just ZOMBIED on normal settings. Bugger it. I cant be asked going to pull the cables out and in every single fucking day just for this... but they are pretty sweet. I think i need to come up with something clever and automated... dont have enough time though.. sucks.
I might as well overclock them a bit since I have to to replug the fuckers every 24 hours any way.

Morning routine +replug U3's CHECK...

[dogie]

As I stated before, we can't get refunds (from Bitmain) unless we bought a pallet of them unless Bitmain can get their resellers to issue the refunds. My reseller (MinerSource) will NOT issue a refund.

I have been trying to RMA my U3 for 2 weeks now but I cannot get an RMA number or I can't get someone to say to send it in without an RMA#. At first I was PM'd by user BitmainWarranty on Dec 26 who saw these forum posts and told me:
a) if I bought it with a credit card I can do a chargeback with the vendor  (!)
or
b) if it is defective I can send it in for repair. They provided the Colorado address but no RMA #.

BUT IF ALL U3'S ARE DEFECTIVE HOW CAN IT BE REPAIRED?

I replied back and asked if I needed an RMA # and no response. I am not going to ship my U3 off without an RMA # unless I am told explicitly to do so, and even then I want to know that my unit is defective and that there are units that actually work that it can actually be repaired or replaced.

Then I was PM'd by BITMAIN_YHQIN who knew nothing of the PMs from BitmainWarranty, and rather than provide an RMA # they wanted to know where I bought it and the order ID and (ugh) a description of the problem (really?). I replied to this on Monday morning and have not heard back.

They're not all defective, there are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of U3s doing fine. I can't force Bitmain / BitmainWarranty to accept a return or refund you because I don't have authority on behalf of the company, but send it in without RMA. Write the information you've provided here on a sheet, a long with minersource order info. Most likely your unit will be replaced.

If for whatever reason everything fails and after a few months you can't get emails replied, I'll cover you for the U3 personally. Not much more that I can do, sorry.

[dogie]

Considering that my power brick melted which forced me to modify the unit to accept power from 12V off my PSU, am I still covered for this warranty?

Yes you are still covered.

[dogie]

It must be the overclocking that crashes the firmware and you MUST hard reset the whole thing. I suppose if you want to get 70ghs out of these puppies then you need to be ready to fix them everyday or create something to cut USB power and +12v with some kind of MCU... I could do it but not worth it really.

No, its not overclocking. My two has zombied from day one, before i even tried anything other than default. And one of them has only given me 40-45 for the most part since i got it.
Due to the shipping cost of them however, it's not worth it to return it from here, i'll just make sure to warn people of the low quality of these.. Too bad, other than that, i kind of like these units.

Yea, mine just ZOMBIED on normal settings. Bugger it. I cant be asked going to pull the cables out and in every single fucking day just for this... but they are pretty sweet. I think i need to come up with something clever and automated... dont have enough time though.. sucks.
I might as well overclock them a bit since I have to to replug the fuckers every 24 hours any way.

Morning routine +replug U3's CHECK...

What type of hub are you on, powered or not powered? USB 3.0 or 2.0? There is also some newer firmware being tested which may fix some of the soft images, but zombie'ing is usually a brief interruption on USB.

[Phosphorous]

As I stated before, we can't get refunds (from Bitmain) unless we bought a pallet of them unless Bitmain can get their resellers to issue the refunds. My reseller (MinerSource) will NOT issue a refund.

I have been trying to RMA my U3 for 2 weeks now but I cannot get an RMA number or I can't get someone to say to send it in without an RMA#. At first I was PM'd by user BitmainWarranty on Dec 26 who saw these forum posts and told me:
a) if I bought it with a credit card I can do a chargeback with the vendor  (!)
or
b) if it is defective I can send it in for repair. They provided the Colorado address but no RMA #.

BUT IF ALL U3'S ARE DEFECTIVE HOW CAN IT BE REPAIRED?

I replied back and asked if I needed an RMA # and no response. I am not going to ship my U3 off without an RMA # unless I am told explicitly to do so, and even then I want to know that my unit is defective and that there are units that actually work that it can actually be repaired or replaced.

Then I was PM'd by BITMAIN_YHQIN who knew nothing of the PMs from BitmainWarranty, and rather than provide an RMA # they wanted to know where I bought it and the order ID and (ugh) a description of the problem (really?). I replied to this on Monday morning and have not heard back.

They're not all defective, there are 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of U3s doing fine. I can't force Bitmain / BitmainWarranty to accept a return or refund you because I don't have authority on behalf of the company, but send it in without RMA. Write the information you've provided here on a sheet, a long with minersource order info. Most likely your unit will be replaced.

If for whatever reason everything fails and after a few months you can't get emails replied, I'll cover you for the U3 personally. Not much more that I can do, sorry.

On what do you base that they are not all defective? No one has replied here yet saying that their unit does not ZOMBIE at least once a day.

[ppumkin]

It must be the overclocking that crashes the firmware and you MUST hard reset the whole thing. I suppose if you want to get 70ghs out of these puppies then you need to be ready to fix them everyday or create something to cut USB power and +12v with some kind of MCU... I could do it but not worth it really.

No, its not overclocking. My two has zombied from day one, before i even tried anything other than default. And one of them has only given me 40-45 for the most part since i got it.
Due to the shipping cost of them however, it's not worth it to return it from here, i'll just make sure to warn people of the low quality of these.. Too bad, other than that, i kind of like these units.

Yea, mine just ZOMBIED on normal settings. Bugger it. I cant be asked going to pull the cables out and in every single fucking day just for this... but they are pretty sweet. I think i need to come up with something clever and automated... dont have enough time though.. sucks.
I might as well overclock them a bit since I have to to replug the fuckers every 24 hours any way.

Morning routine +replug U3's CHECK...

What type of hub are you on, powered or not powered? USB 3.0 or 2.0? There is also some newer firmware being tested which may fix some of the soft images, but zombie'ing is usually a brief interruption on USB.

USB 2.0 Direct into Motherboard USB Slots, NO Hub, and proper USB shielded USB cable.
U3 12V Powered from 450WATT, separate PSU.

It happens only after some hours and a brief interruption USB should just restart mining, for example. Pull out USB cable, ZOMBIE after 10 seconds, plug in USB cable, ZOMBIE goes away.

In this situation the only way to remove ZOMBIE is to hard power cycle the unit, becuase cgminer does not pickup the USB, or if it does it cannot communicate with it, which means the firmware shat a brick sideways.

If you can turn off USB somehow, then thats the key to hard cycle the U3. I just noticed even with 12volt plugged, the red light inside goes out. Also, I deliberatly sacrificed a USB cable and cut the 5V. I wanted to see if I could just turn the PSU on and OFF which would also power cycle MCU on the U3. But no.. that would be to easy. The MCU is powered by the USB +5 and the ASICS are powered by the 12volt line.

Please note these are Pure deductions by trial and error. I have not fried anything, yet. Phew.

[dogie]

It must be the overclocking that crashes the firmware and you MUST hard reset the whole thing. I suppose if you want to get 70ghs out of these puppies then you need to be ready to fix them everyday or create something to cut USB power and +12v with some kind of MCU... I could do it but not worth it really.

No, its not overclocking. My two has zombied from day one, before i even tried anything other than default. And one of them has only given me 40-45 for the most part since i got it.
Due to the shipping cost of them however, it's not worth it to return it from here, i'll just make sure to warn people of the low quality of these.. Too bad, other than that, i kind of like these units.

Yea, mine just ZOMBIED on normal settings. Bugger it. I cant be asked going to pull the cables out and in every single fucking day just for this... but they are pretty sweet. I think i need to come up with something clever and automated... dont have enough time though.. sucks.
I might as well overclock them a bit since I have to to replug the fuckers every 24 hours any way.

Morning routine +replug U3's CHECK...

What type of hub are you on, powered or not powered? USB 3.0 or 2.0? There is also some newer firmware being tested which may fix some of the soft images, but zombie'ing is usually a brief interruption on USB.

USB 2.0 Direct into Motherboard USB Slots, NO Hub, and proper USB shielded USB cable.
U3 12V Powered from 450WATT, separate PSU.

It happens only after some hours and a brief interruption USB should just restart mining, for example. Pull out USB cable, ZOMBIE after 10 seconds, plug in USB cable, ZOMBIE goes away.

In this situation the only way to remove ZOMBIE is to hard power cycle the unit, becuase cgminer does not pickup the USB, or if it does it cannot communicate with it, which means the firmware shat a brick sideways.

If you can turn off USB somehow, then thats the key to hard cycle the U3. I just noticed even with 12volt plugged, the red light inside goes out. Also, I deliberatly sacrificed a USB cable and cut the 5V. I wanted to see if I could just turn the PSU on and OFF which would also power cycle MCU on the U3. But no.. that would be to easy. The MCU is powered by the USB +5 and the ASICS are powered by the 12volt line.

Please note these are Pure deductions by trial and error. I have not fried anything, yet. Phew.

A powered USB hub will likely help, as there is some power draw through the USB port. You're right that windows / firmware / whatever it is controlling the device to the OS / cgminer shouldn't behave like that, but it does. I am not sure which party in that has control over a potential remedy.

[irobb]

Update:

It's been running almost 24 hours with no zombie but the hashrate is lower now...

https://i.imgur.com/FFzUGOz.jpg

I suspect that the thermal compound is the culprit of the zombie.  It was spread all over the board on top of the surface mounted devices under the heat sink which probably caused the instability issues as it would heat up and create a medium for a short to take place...

Can someone else take theirs apart, clean off like I did, and see if that fixes the zombie issue?

[ppumkin]

Update:

It's been running almost 24 hours with no zombie but the hashrate is lower now...

https://i.imgur.com/FFzUGOz.jpg

I suspect that the thermal compound is the culprit of the zombie.  It was spread all over the board on top of the surface mounted devices under the heat sink which probably caused the instability issues as it would heat up and create a medium for a short to take place...

Can someone else take theirs apart, clean off like I did, and see if that fixes the zombie issue?

Hi- I will take mine apart today and see what is going on in there.

Last night I started the two using 250mhs and 800mV  and they have been running at 62.5ghs pretty nicely. about 12 hours later the one ZOMBIED.  I also created even MORE cooling to the heatsinks in like a custom wind tunnel design...

So I will take it apart and clean it. I have very good expeirence in electronics so I wont noob this up. Also got all the correct tools and liquids etc to do a proper job.

I suspect it wont help... the next route after this will be a powered USB hub. And I will connect that hub to the PC without the 5V channel and let the HUB power the units. Also put them on a 4 hour timer. turn of for 15 minutes and restart the whole thing. If I turn of the USB hub power then that should emualte pulling out the cable and restarting the MCU on next power up. I got all this on a sperate power adapter so I will just turn everything off, restart cgminer with some scripts and restart it. Then I can keep these settings at 62.5ghs and it will have some short resting periods (i hope that wont cause to much PCB strees) and it will restart and keep running till the cows come home.

OH- by the way, the same thing happened to me when it droped from ~60 to ~45 because of the voltage settings. Recomended is close to  800mv using a nice PSU like a computer one. I run mine on the stock PSU (240v) using 790mv and it got hot but didnt melt but that worried me so I just found and old PC and pulled the PSU and hooked it up to that. Its more effiecient any way and keep it at 800mv now.

[2n3906]

More evidence of some problems with the supplied power supply. This happened on day one.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Q7smhzWnXG0/VK7JKPgwLFI/AAAAAAAAiRM/kQrhYfQAQUA/w997-h665-no/IMG_1671.JPG

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Lx-2MqF0l0U/VK7JKDqGglI/AAAAAAAAiRQ/lRf2Eo2dhbQ/w997-h665-no/IMG_1672.JPG

[irobb]

WOW. I should pop mine open to see what it looks like too...  Yet folks seem to think that they only melt at stock settings...  They must have received a nicer version than us...

[irobb]

So check it out... Looks like I have been up and running for over 39 hours with no zombie...  However, it looks like only 3 of the 4 chips are working on my unit; thus the lower hashrates...

39 Hours before exiting:
https://i.imgur.com/XEbnJVB.jpg

Receive 1-3, missing #4:
https://i.imgur.com/RNlWvYI.jpg

[ppumkin]

OK I opened mine up and cleaned all that paste out, I forgot the stuff between the heatsink and the PCB..... shouldnt matter that much on that side.

This thermal paste is like stuffed inbetween the pins of the ASIC's... I couldnt clean it out without getting more aggressive and the last thing I needed is to kill an ASIC so I did my best by gently cleaning it for an hour and using alco wipes and some other SMD tools.

https://i.imgur.com/DiLIz5O.jpg

Fused spunk allover the fucking place

https://i.imgur.com/3LQeHyv.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/cl1lOOr.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/SerSo5j.jpg

Arctic Silver (Silver Oxide thermal paste)

https://i.imgur.com/yyQeqts.jpg

Chilling at 62.5ghs on top of his brother

https://i.imgur.com/k4LNjLt.jpg


Ill let it run till tomorrow. We see what happens.

[irobb]

HAHAHAHAHA. That made me LOL. I used the same stuff... Alcohol wipes but then used a toothpick and toothbrush to really get the crap off the pcb and smd's...  Hope it solves your problem, excited to see.